Shifting from top-down command structures to horizontal communication and collaboration

Don also talked about Agile Leadership Mindset and stressed the importance of the following behavioral transitions:

From Directing to Coaching

From Hiding Failure to Learning from Failure

From Telling to Collaborating

From Avoiding Blame to Seeing Feedback

Bob Sarni’s – “Radical Collaboration” delivered the following main message: “Organizations cannot compete externally until they can collaborate internally“

Bob referenced the book “Corporate Culture and Performance” by John Kotter and James Heskett: Non-enhancing Cultures vs. Enhancing Cultures, alluding to the fact that sometimes the best way to overcome resistance, is to remove resistors.

The following four quadrants of self-discovery were covered:

Who we are (Self-mastery):

Self-Awareness

Self-Esteem

Emotional Intelligence

Values

Interpersonal (Social Intelligence):

Communication

Trustworthiness

Cooperation

Rules of Engagement

What we Do:

Project

Product

Task

Service

How We Do it:

Systems/Processes

Decision Making

Structure

Policies

Bob also stressed the point that when it comes to going through organizational changes, companies tend to focus on Practices, instead of focusing on underlining Principles and Values. This results in unsustainable, short-term successes only.
Another great quote from Bob’s session: “Business Analysis have their focus on the outer side of business”, mainly focusing on questions of ‘what should we be doing?‘ and ‘how can we do it better, faster and more efficiently’. It turns out that the inner side of the business is where the greatest opportunity for radical improvement resides”. The inner side of the business contains the heart and soul of the business.

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